Yesterday Brad McQuaid, one of the oriinal designers of EverQuest, revealed his new development studio and launched a Kickstarter campaign for its first MMORPG, Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. One question thats been asked by many since McQuaid started teasing the project some time is  what will make it different from the growing mountain of MMORPGs already on the market. Today McQuaid tried to answer that in his first update to Kickstarter. His response will probably make some old school MMORPG players all warm and fuzzy inside.

What Makes Pantheon Unique?

This question has come up a bit during our initial Kickstarter launch. What makes Pantheon stand out from the rest of MMOs?

To answer that, we don't necessarily believe that there's a lot of things wrong with today's MMOs. There are plenty of good games out there. But they are missing something that we are offering that no one else is - a return to classic-style game play that encourages more social interaction and rewards effort. We believe that the player should dictate how far they progress and not have everyone with the same quality of character, despite the amount of effort put in. To us effort = reward and there will be a difference between players that have a lot of dedication versus those who can only play a little. We believe that when players get together and put in a group effort, the rewards should match. We believe that content and encounters should be meaningful and memorable and not something that gets rushed through in a few seconds, leaving little impression on the players. We believe we can make a world players will actually want to live in again, instead of a game people play when they have some spare time.

We don't think we need to focus on all sorts of new mechanics and systems to accomplish that. While it's important that this game is modern, we need to balance that with some core elements of the past. We will have some new ideas in the game, for sure, and we're excited to tell you about them over the next few weeks, but when it comes down to it, we're returning to what made MMOs so popular in the first place - a whole new experience that can be savored and enjoyed with friends. Let's bring the MM back to MMO.

The first day of the Kickstarter campaign has already exceeded $70k of the targeted $800k goal. What McQuaid proposes is certainly a game that personally intrigues me, but Ive seen enough hype and letdown over the years to know not to get too excited. But with any luck McQuaid will pull this one off.

Along with the above question, the update also discussed the screenshots on the Kickstarter page, new Pledge tiers, and how fans can help support the project. Read the full Kickstarter update for more.

About The Author

Stacy "Martuk" Jones was a long-time news editor and community manager for many of our previous game sites, such as Age of Conan. Stacy has since moved on to become a masked super hero, battling demons in another dimension.